


Mitigation

by scribblemyname



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Aftermath of brainwashing, Developing Friendship, Established Relationship, F/M, Gen, Recruitment, SHIELD, Trust, partners
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-21
Updated: 2015-01-22
Packaged: 2018-03-07 17:05:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3177456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribblemyname/pseuds/scribblemyname
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They <em>should</em> kill her. Hawkeye should have tried to.</p><p>But he didn't and he's staring at her now as though she just randomly stood on her head rather than asked him why.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [enigma731](https://archiveofourown.org/users/enigma731/gifts).



> Thanks to andibeth82, my first reader.

When Natasha arrives at SHIELD, she still isn't sure what to make of the agent leading her in, quiver slung over his shoulders and back, and utterly unapologetic to his superiors.

She says little to their pointed questions, letting Hawkeye volley back and forth over his crossed arms and hard eyes with his soft-spoken handler and suspicious, hard-nosed Director. When it's over and Hawkeye's blowing out a frustrated breath as they prepare to lead her to a cushy cell to wait for morning, her voice stops him from leaving.

"Why did you?" she echoes his handler's question, his Director's question. It stops the harried movement in the room of the tech who'd had truth serum at the ready and the handler, the Director, the several observers. "Am I that pretty?" She tilts the corners of her mouth upward in a pretty smile. She doesn't mind pointing out the foolhardy nature of his decision in front of his superiors.

They _should_ kill her. Hawkeye should have tried to.

But he didn't and he's staring at her now as though she just randomly stood on her head rather than asked a justifiable question. "I'm married," he says, clipped.

She shrugs. It hasn't stopped men before.

It stops _him_ though, and it doesn't take long for Natasha to realize it.

—

He invites her over to his place for dinner when he gets the chance and reminds her that his wife will be there; it's not him trying to make a move on her like everyone else she's ever worked with that said the word 'dinner.'

Natasha stares at him for a long time before she unfolds herself from the surprisingly comfortable cot in her cell. "Do I get to sleep on a mattress?" she asks, batting her eyelashes demurely.

He stares at her, then barks a laugh. "Yes, ma'am, you do."

"I'll come."

—

Her name is Bobbi and Natasha observes her with interest. She's down to earth, like Hawkeye— _"Clint. Clint Barton."_ —and laughs easily as she slides a beer across the table and gripes at SHIELD employees by name that they're keeping her locked up.

They should keep her locked up.

"You know," Bobbi says suddenly, out of nowhere. "I've been there with the brainwashing."

Natasha stiffens.

Bobbi's staring at her plate and focused on twirling noodles onto her fork to put them in her mouth.

The silence drifts tensely for a minute, stretches, then Clint eases out a subject change into the middle of it, and the stories shift to circus shenanigans, few of which Natasha actually believes.

She catches them later in the kitchen, murmuring softly to each other under the running water sound of doing dishes and the clank of plates.

"How would you have taken it?" he asks.

Bobbi shoots him an irritated glance. "I tried to kill you."

He steps up close behind her and tucks his body around hers, chin on her shoulder, arms around her stiff waist. "Takes more than that to kill me."

Natasha doesn't trust either of them. Trust is foolish in their world of spies and assassins and she's not ready to give up her caution yet.

—

Bobbi shows up in her cell, arms crossed and leaning in the doorway. "Nice place," she quips, small smile quirking her lips. "SHIELD really rolled out the red carpet."

There's bitterness there, something faint and barely noticeable under the sarcasm if Natasha were not what she is, a spy—one of the best. She gazes back steadily without responding. She can learn more by waiting the woman out.

Bobbi tosses her a lanyard. "You've been cleared for the gym if someone goes with you." She removes a small battle staff from her uniform and twirls it invitingly.

Natasha decides she has nothing to lose by going and nothing to gain by staying. She puts on the lanyard and glides to her feet. "Will I have my weapons?"

"You'll _have_ weapons, but Fury's still skittish." Bobbi tucks the battle staff away as they walk. "Clint's keeping an eye on your things. You'll get them back unscathed."

Natasha tries not to bristle, isn't ready to trust the man who'd nearly killed her with anything personal, but it's Bobbi putting weapons in her hands, so she decides not to argue.

—

She's partnered with Clint for her first mission, a milk run so simple, she could have done it broken-limbed and blindfolded.

"Preaching to the choir, Nat. Maybe next time."

She gives him a look for the nickname.

He either misunderstands or ignores it as he strips out of his tac gear and loses the shirt on the way to the locker room.

Natasha has seen many scars and she's not particularly impressed by them, but he has three small round scars clustered far too close to his heart for him to be alive. They don't quite match any bullet she's familiar with.

"What's it like nearly dying?" she asks. It's not a casual question, but she asks it like she has the right or it's okay to imply so much with so little.

He looks back sharply, surprised. She watches confusion cross his face as he tries to follow the thought, then his hand comes up to a scar on his arm thoughtfully. He has not visibly stiffened, but she gets the impression of a hardness he hasn't turned on her lately.

"Nearly dying," he answers and disappears into the men's half of the locker room.

She drops the SHIELD issued weapons on the bench beside his gear but waits until she's inside the women's half to start losing clothes.

—

Natasha asks after Bobbi and gets blank looks until a girl from the gun cage draws her brows together and asks, "Mockingbird? Try Lab 2."

Mockingbird is in Lab 2, according to the baby agent at reception issuing her guest pass. No one told him Natasha hasn't been cleared to go wherever she wants. Of course, there's always the chance Natasha _has_ been cleared, but she doubts Fury is so stupid.

Mockingbird is Bobbi, head bent over her work, lips moving over mumbled, inaudible half-sentences that Natasha can't even read. Natasha is silent as she approaches and avoids stepping between Bobbi and the light, but the scientist still looks up as soon as it would normally be polite to do so.

"Can I help you?"

Natasha leans back against the counter and asks, "Is he for real?"

Bobbi looks surprised, then amused. "Ex-carnie, homegrown Iowan with a penchant for strays. As real as they come."

"I don't believe it," Natasha says flatly. _Why_ did he let her live? She doesn't regret the things she's done. She survived. She needed to.

But Bobbi's giving her a wary look and setting down the petri dish. She licks her lips and glances at the clock. "Come on. I'll buy you lunch."

Natasha balks.

"Coffee then, but out."

That's acceptable and reasonable, so Natasha goes along with it until they're ensconced blocks away at a hole-in-the-wall café where Bobbi's sure they won't be bothered. The distrust for her own people, for SHIELD, makes sense to Natasha. It loosens the knot of discomfort slightly that they are all mad and she should flee while she still can. She's not worried about what Bobbi could do to her.

Bobbi leans back in her seat with the coffee, looking to most observers like that sigh is relaxing from the stress of her job, but Natasha can see how the head toss gives Bobbi an opportunity to finish visually casing the place and keep an eye on the exits.

"Weird does not begin to cover this job," Bobbi opens with, cutting the small talk and drawing a raised eyebrow from Natasha. "I've done a lot of undercover, as a scientist, a regular field agent, posing as a psychic once."

Natasha doesn't sip her coffee like Bobbi does. Even if she's fairly certain it's not drugged, she doesn't take any chances.

"There was this one guy, a total crazy." Bobbi shakes her head. "He was good with drugs, shot me up with a real cocktail of them. I forgot who I was, who SHIELD was, who Clint was and when they came to get me out, I fought them as hard as I could."

"What did he make you do?" Natasha asks. It seems too much to ask and she would never volunteer her own ledger to another, but Bobbi offered this and it seems too much that Bobbi really understands.

Bobbi sits back, jaw clenched, and sips her coffee again. Stalling? No, she answers, "He made me play house and lab partner." There's bitterness there, and this time the edge is familiar. "He ordered me to protect him and me from SHIELD, and I was still pretty much brainwashed when I came to on the table at headquarters. They'd put restraints on me, but not the kind you use for prisoners, the kind you use when Barton's delirious and you don't want him to take off before you can treat him."

Bobbi stops, hesitates. Natasha waits.

"There were casualties."

There's more there, but no more is needed. When Bobbi closes her mouth tightly and tilts her head, as if to ask, 'Enough?', Natasha nods. It's enough.

"Clint told me he tried to," Bobbi offers, "but he couldn't do it."

"Would you have?"

Bobbi blows out a breath. "Now? No. Then?" She shrugs, finishes her coffee. It's their job.

—

It's not exactly pleasant, knowing her partner's weaknesses or that it lies in an area she tries to avoid, but Natasha can accept it. It's neither sexual nor is it one she shares. If she needs to kill someone who's brainwashed for him, she can and she will.


	2. Chapter 2

Laughing, dinner, mission.

How long ago was that?

Time slows down, blood is bubbling up through her abdomen, and at least it was a clean shot, Natasha thinks to herself. She might live.

She just might live.

Dinner, laughing, mission. She hated the annoying pomp of Clint's ringtone for Fury when she heard it. She clings to that annoyance, heel of her hand pressed over the blood. She hates his ringtone for Fury.

—

Laughing.

Bobbi was telling her about _that time_ in Lima when she and Clint made the absolutely worst, unconvincing American tourists ever.

"Clint is so American you can't make him up, I swear,"—Bobbi shot him a fond look—"but his Spanish was atrocious and so Argentinian, our targets decided we were really with the organized crime from this Argentinian family we didn't even know about..."

The story got more convoluted, Clint deciding he was double-crossing Bobbi who rolled with it like a square peg until she got fed up and blew the building.

"Property damage, Mock. Gotta respect the property."

Natasha snorted inelegantly. "Look who's talking."

 _"Thank_ you," Bobbi agreed.

"Is this a true story?" Natasha ventured, puzzled.

"I learned Spanish from a carnie, and he was from Argentina..."

Clint didn't get far before Bobbi cut him off with, "Oh, do the Castilian Spanish. That is laugh out loud bad."

With a longsuffering sigh, Clint demonstrated with an impeccably phrased greeting.

"Bozhe moi," Natasha agreed. "You had no chance."

Bobbi grinned smugly and Clint threatened to stop feeding her.

—

Of course, that's not right. Natasha is bleeding and messy, sprawled against her charge, having shared the bullet, but Clint will always feed her. He's her partner.

That's what partners do.

_Bozhe moi. You have no chance._

That's not right. She doesn't have to speak Spanish. She doesn't have to speak...

—

Dinner.

They ate on the couch around a coffee table that had seen better days and the bottomside of too many pairs of combat boots. Bobbi and Clint aren't proud and elegant and that is more of what Natasha likes about them than what she expected. She lay half-curled into Bobbi's side, sharing the sensation of the other woman's laughter, while Clint perched up on the couch's arm and told tall tales of the legend of Coulson ( _"I swear. He took all eight guards down with a single shoelace. No lie."_ ) and the prank wars of yore ( _"Never tick off the Cavalry is all I'm saying. Or at least make sure she's out of glitter."_ ).

It was unreal and comfortable, and it's very comfortableness was what made Natasha think it was uncomfortable. She shouldn't have been there. She didn't deserve it. She should get out before she got in too deep.

"Just one more slice, please," Bobbi begged from beneath her. "I hate leftovers."

Clint spluttered. "Leftovers are the best part!"

Natasha sat up, an excuse ready on her lips, then that abominable ring tone blared from between the couch cushions.

—

"Clint! Get down."

She saw silver.

Natasha dove between her charge, the person she was supposed to protect, and the figure walking out of the wailing smoke of what used to be their car. She knew that walk, that stride, and memory turned sideways abruptly.

 _"Natasha."_ Clint's voice on the comm.

Natalia. Widow. Black Widow.

The Soldier looked at her with dead eyes like he knew her ( _Of course, he does._ ) and raised his weapon to fire—through her.

—

Mission.

Clint had brought Natasha's own weapons back to her three missions in and two missions before she had been allowed to rent her own place off of SHIELD property. He had counted out each item and handed it to her then asked quite seriously, "Anything missing?"

Natasha had checked it all over carefully and determined that not only was nothing missing, it was all in excellent condition. She looked at him. "Bobbi said you were keeping them personally."

"Yeah, well." He shrugged. "There aren't too many people I trust with my bow."

So she had her weapons with her when they got the call and Clint's phone rang obnoxiously with that pompous, bombastic atrocity of a song.

"What is that?" Natasha demanded.

Bobbi answered, "Star Wars," and Clint answered, "Fury," simultaneously.

She didn't have time to sort out what they meant before Clint was talking quietly to Fury and she knew they had a mission.

Bobbi looked equal parts interested and displeased. She'd only had them back for less than a week.

"I will bring him back in one piece," Natasha promised solemnly.

Bobbi pressed her lips together, flicker of a frown smoothed away. "Yeah, well, don't die out there. Either of you. I'd miss you if you were dead."

It made Natasha uncomfortable. Natasha had never had anyone to miss her.

—

Odessa.

F— Odessa.

She's coughing up blood and she can't hear anything through her comm over the rushing sound in her ears. Clint's in one piece. She ordered him to get away the moment she saw that metal arm.

The flash of memory. It's all so strange and surreal how her mind and memory turns to quicksand at the sight of him. He must be Red Room. He must have been Red Room. He's bleeding and blood; she's bleeding and blood. Star Wars is ringing and it's the most annoying thing she's ever heard, interrupting dinner and laughter with a mission.

The Soldier's target is dead, bullet through her body to his. Natasha should be dead too. She lifts her gun and looks into the Soldier's eyes.

_I know him._

His eyes are dead. His arm is silver. She remembers, remembers... She needs to kill him before Clint gets here so she can bring her partner back in one piece.

Then the Soldier is gone.

The gun falls, she's bleeding, and she should have killed him. _Bozhe moi_ , she never had a chance.

—

_"Don't die out there. Either of you."_

—

Natasha doesn't like the look on Bobbi's face when she wakes up in medical, but Bobbi smiles when she realizes Natasha's awake.

"You had me worried."

"Clint..."

"He's fine."

"And in the flesh," Clint's voice intrudes.

Natasha squints up at the doorway where her partner looks like he dragged a bloody body through the dust for a mile or two before pickup. She doesn't know if it's memory or not, but her heart sinks when she realizes that is exactly what happened. "I—"

"You didn't shoot him," Clint says quietly. He's the only one that knew she had the Soldier dead to rights, knew as bloody as she'd been that she could have shot him and salvaged _something_ from Odessa.

Bobbi's hand is holding Natasha's.

Natasha looks at Bobbi and says, "I couldn't."

—

When she's released, she goes to their apartment instead of hers.

Natasha curls in on herself on the couch. She's shaking. She shouldn't be shaking. It's a weakness she doesn't want to acknowledge, and she can feel Clint notice without saying anything.

It's Bobbi who makes the first move, cautiously settling beside Natasha on the couch and gently touching her hair, something without nerve endings, a gentle request for permission.

Natasha allows it but she doesn't know how to give permission, so she says nothing and doesn't react. Perhaps that's all that's needed. Bobbi wraps one arm around her and holds her warmly. Clint sits on the other side, bracketing her in. Her mind should be screaming at her for letting herself be surrounded. Instead she feels safe and lets them hold her, lets her head drop to Clint's shoulder and her fingers twist into Bobbi's. Bobbi's making a soft, soothing sound and the three of them just breathe together until their inhalations fall in sync and Natasha finally gets enough air to be okay.

—

She wakes on their couch to the gentle noises of Clint puttering around the dining room table with various broken arrows and heads he's always saying he gets around to fixing every so often. She chalks it up as one more thing he wasn't actually lying about.

Someone put an old, tattered afghan on her. She would guess Bobbi, but its worn state makes her wonder.

"You can stop pretending to be asleep," Clint says quietly.

She shoots him an annoyed look and rolls gingerly off the couch. She feels terrible, and she wonders why anyone would ever allow themselves to cry if this is what it feels like afterward.

"You should have killed me, Barton," she says abruptly.

He brings his head up sharply, hand stilling on the arrows. He didn't expect her to lead with that for all his wife doesn't bother with small talk often either.

"It was your job. You should have—"

"Stop." He's still staring, face expressionless and shuttered. "Just stop." He drops a broken shaft on the table and scrubs his hand over his face.

They stay that way for a long moment, an impasse. She is unable and unwilling to tell him she was faced with her own weakness in Odessa and it was identical to her partner's. _But I knew him,_ she thinks viciously to herself. She had been a stranger to Clint.

He looks at her and she is not a stranger. "I could never kill you," he says, and her heart sinks because she believes him.


	3. Chapter 3

The Battle of New York is over. It already has a name and place in history, besides the personal mark it has made in _their_ history, the history of Strike Team Delta.

Natasha and Clint make their way back to the Helicarrier after shawarma and team bonding in the aftermath of the battle. Repair teams have already begun swarming over the ship, even as crews set to work through the various war-torn swaths of New York. Clint has been doing fine since he started fighting again with SHIELD and the Avengers, and Natasha meets everyone they passed with the same unforgiving gaze until she's certain they won't cast dark glances toward Clint. They don't.

In Medical, they have no time for anger or fear, ordering a straightforward strip of tac gear so they can disinfect and bandage up the cuts and gashes Natasha and Clint sustained. A soft curse precedes a nurse ordering him to sit down while she gets the tweezers to work on the glass in his arms and back.

"Nice." But Clint sits, too weary to remark much further.

Natasha is released first. She signals to him that she'll be waiting in the outer room where the chairs are set up, then calls Bobbi. Clint joins her several minutes later to lean his head back against the wall with a soft thunk and let his eyes fall shut. She studies her partner in the dim light, glad to have him back, to feel his tiredness beside her own and the solidarity in a job well done.

"You blew up my lab." Bobbi's curt, miffed tone draws both of their attention instantly. She's dressed for war, Mockingbird, white coat exchanged for battle staves and catsuit, bruises and dirt on the visible parts of her skin.

Clint's gaze comes up sharply and he's been fine since they sat together quietly and exchanged what words they could before battle, he's been fine since he fired arrows into Chitauri and at Loki, but suddenly Natasha can see the flicker of uncertainty in his eyes again. She would give anything to wipe it away.

Bobbi sees it too. Her mouth tightens and she steps forward slowly to stand in front of him, fingers gently tracing up the back of his neck. He leans into her, then wraps his arms around her waist as she holds him close and kisses the top of his head. "You blew up my lab," she says softly.

The tension runs out of him. Natasha finally lets out a breath.

—

Natasha goes home to her own apartment to give them space. She steps gingerly onto the wood floor of her living room and aches a little at the emptiness there. She feels like she left her heart somewhere else in the middle of a battlefield, playing soldier with powers she never believed in.

Regimes crumble to the ground, and it doesn't bother her, but staring into her partner's stricken blue eyes felt like the gut punch of a bullet through her stomach and the dead look of a faded memory's eyes. She turns on her heel and goes back the way she came.

—

They're married. He was brainwashed. They deserve their space. But they're three of a kind now and it feels inevitable when her cold fingers pull her body up the fire escape onto his apartment building's roof. She fishes out Clint's makeshift targets for archery practice from under a heap of ashy tarps and sets up the targets on the far end of the roof in a row. She backs up and pulls out her sharpened knives.

The first one makes a dull thunk against the outer ring, and the back of Natasha's mind hums with disapproval. Her shoulder's out and her muscles are jumping with exhaustion, but there is no room in her work for injury and exhaustion. She throws again, another knife, and this one lands closer to the center.

She works for a while, landing knives in targets, too distant from where she wants them but close enough to satisfy her, then goes to collect the knives and throw again. Somewhere in there, the moon rises higher, the lights of the city throw enough glow to see by, and the low chaotic music of it fades to white noise.

Somewhere in there, Clint clambers out onto the roof and sits down behind her. He doesn't say anything, just swallows some beer, and watches her throwing knives. She hears the whir of air and twirling metal and turns to see Bobbi's staves spinning around and around in her hands.

"You should rest," she tells them both.

Bobbi smiles and lowers one staff in favor of another beer from Clint. She shrugs.

Natasha knows Bobbi now. She knows that twirling means Bobbi's thinking and working through a problem in her mind. She knows that easy shrug from Clint means he's somewhere inside his head. He's not shooting though, he's not angry, nor is Bobbi dragging out the punching bag. And they know her too. They know her knives come out when she needs to take control back of her own world again.

"Hey, Tash," Clint's voice comes out of nowhere.

She yanks the last knife out of the last target and holds it poised in her fingers. She pauses, looks at him.

He grins, lazy and easy in the way that lets her know he's about to annoy her and enjoy himself doing it. "You should have killed me."

She stares at him, breath hitching, and fingers closing around the knife. She hears the whir of the staves starting up again, sees Bobbi's back and Clint's unforgiving steady gaze, and swallows hard.

"I know."

She could never kill him. Never.

Bobbi comes back around and drops her weapons beside her husband, picks up a third bottle, and waves it invitingly.

Natasha goes over and joins them.


End file.
